From 2019 to 2025, 111 thousand retail businesses in the municipalities disappeared

From 2019 to 2025, 111 thousand retail businesses and 24 thousand bars disappeared in Italy.

Overall, in 5,103 municipalities at least one type of basic proximity activity that was previously present has disappeared. Confesercenti underlines this on the basis of Chamber of Commerce data.

Around 72 thousand were basic proximity businesses, i.e. shops that guarantee access to goods and services essential for daily life. These include mainly bakeries, butchers, tobacconists, hairdressers, but also petrol stations. Specifically, from the photograph that the confederation takes regarding commercial desertification, it emerges that in the country there are 1,064 municipalities without food shops, 566 without bars and more than 2,500 without fuel stations.

A phenomenon that reaches "alarming proportions" especially in smaller towns. All 566 Italian municipalities without even a bar have fewer than 5 thousand inhabitants, as do all 1,337 municipalities without a barber or hairdresser. However, desertification does not stop at the villages, underlines Confesercenti. Among the municipalities with 15 thousand-50 thousand inhabitants, 140 do not have a shop specializing in the sale of bread, 138 a fishmonger, 97 a bookshop, 24 a newsagent and 8 not even a butcher's shop. Absences of basic local activities are also recorded in centers with between 50 thousand and 250 thousand inhabitants.